Analysis of Snowdrops

Sydney Thompson Dobell 1824 (Kent) – 1874



Have you heard the Snowdrops ringing
Their bells to themselves?
Smaller and whiter than the singing
Of any fairy elves
Who follow Mab their Queen
When she is winging
On a moth across the night
And calls them all
With a far-twinkling call
Like the tiniest ray of tiniest starlight
That ever was seen?

Far and near, high and low,
Don't you hear the little bells go?
Not in the big winds that blow
The roaring beeches to and fro,
Not in the lower rivers
Of the breeze
Below the trees,
When the stiff bracken shines,
And the thin bent quivers,
And the limp green waves to and fro,
You shall hear the little bells go,

But in the jets and rivulets
That sputter from the melting snows
When against the mighty bole
Of a beech they dash and swirl
And twist and twirl,
The licking leaves throw
A thousand airy drops invisible
Down the strong perpendicular
To where the snowdrops are;
Tiny drops that fall and meet,
And swift and sweet
Run dim viewless course of fitful force,
Like an airy waterfall
You shall hear the little bells go
All the tiny snowbells swinging,
Tiny chauntlets high and low.


Scheme ababcadeedc ffffxggxbfF bxxhhfxxxiixeFaf
Poetic Form
Metre 1110110 11101 100101010 110101 110111 11110 1010101 0111 1011001 10100111001 11011 101101 11101011 1001111 0101101 1001010 101 0101 101101 00111 00111101 11101011 100101 11010101 1010101 1011101 0101 01011 0101010100 1010100 11011 1011101 0101 11111101 111010 11101011 1010110 101101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,057
Words 202
Sentences 5
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 11, 11, 16
Lines Amount 38
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 289
Words per stanza (avg) 67
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:00 min read
24

Sydney Thompson Dobell

Sydney Thompson Dobell, English poet and critic, was born at Cranbrook, Kent. more…

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